Explore the Books app

Navigate the Books app using the tabs at the bottom of the app. Read on for explanations of what you can find in each tab.

If you want to return to these tabs while reading, tap the center of your device to open the controls at the top of the screen, then tap to close the book and return to your library.

Reading Now

In this tab, you have quick access to the last book or audiobook that you were reading. You can also see items that you add to your Want To Read list and recommendations based on your reading history.

Library

Your Library contains all of the books, book series, PDFs, and audiobooks that you buy from the Book Store or manually add to your library.

To view just a certain media type, tap Collections. To organize your content in a different way, create a custom Collection: tap New Collection, enter a title for your collection, then add books from your Library.

Organize your Library

To organize your Library, tap Sort under Collections. You can choose to sort your content by recent purchases, title, author, or manually. Tap to change to a list view. You can also sort any collection this way. For example, go to Collections > PDFs to sort your PDFs by author.

To see only what you've downloaded to your device, go to Collections > Downloaded. You won't see Downloaded if you haven't downloaded anything.

Book Store

Buy new books in the Book Store. You can browse what's new and trending, or check the Apple Books and New York Times top charts. You can also tap in the upper-right corner to browse by genres like Young Adult, Nonfiction, or Comics & Graphic Novels.

Read a sample

To read a sample of a book (if available), tap any book to view its product page, then tap SAMPLE below the book's price button.

You can also listen to samples of audiobooks: Tap any audiobook, then tap PREVIEW below the audiobook's price button.

Audiobooks

In this tab, you can find the audiobooks that are available in the Book Store. Browse what's new and trending, or check out the Apple Books top charts. You can also tap in the upper-right corner to browse by genres like Kids & Young Adults or Self Development, or tap Great Narrators to view audiobooks with full-cast dramatizations or celebrity narrators. Learn more about audiobooks.

Search

Use this tab to search for specific titles, authors, narrators, and more. After you search, you'll see results that are already in your Library and books and audiobooks that are available to buy in the Book Store.

Read books

Tap any book to open it and start reading. If you close the book, Apple Books remembers where you stopped and starts there when you start reading again.

Show and hide controls

While reading, tap the center of your device to open the controls at the top of the screen.

Tap to close the book and return to your library.

Tap to view the table of contents. You can also jump to any bookmarks or notes from here.

Tap to change how the page looks. You can increase or decrease the font size; change to a different colored background, including a dark one; turn on Auto-Night Theme*; or turn off Scrolling View to swipe between pages.

Tap to search the book for a specific word or page number.

Tap to save your place for later. In some books, you can also tap to bring up a list of your bookmarks.

* Turn on Auto-Night Theme to automatically change the bookshelf, page color, and brightness when using Books in low-light conditions. (Not all books support Auto-Night Theme.)

Take notes

Get more out of your book without leaving the Books app. Touch and hold any word in a book to open the text selection tool. Tap Look Up to view a word's definition and other suggestions from the web. Tap Highlight to make it easy to find your selection later, or Note to highlight the selection and add notes.

To find your notes later, you might need to go to different places depending on the book. For most books, tap then tap Notes. For some books, you can just tap .

Download or delete content

If you want to read a book or listen to an audiobook when you're not connected to Wi-Fi or the Internet, you can download it to your iOS device or computer. You can also delete items from your devices.

Download books and audiobooks

To download a book, find the item in your Library, then tap under the book's cover image. If the book is part of a series, open the series first, then download a specific book.

If you don't see or , the book is already downloaded to your device.

To download an audiobook, tap Reading Now, then tap your profile icon. Under My Purchases, tap Audiobooks, then find the audiobook that you want to download. Tap to redownload your previous purchase.

Delete books, audiobooks or PDFs

Tap underneath the item, choose Remove, then choose Remove Download. If you want to remove a purchased book from your Library entirely, tap Hide Book.

If the item is part of a series, you might need to open the series first before you can delete it. You might also see an option to Delete Everywhere if it's a PDF or other item that you added to your Library from a source other than the Book Store.

Change your settings

To control some settings of Apple Books on your iOS device, you need to have iCloud Drive turned on: Go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud and turn on both iCloud Drive and Books. Then go to Settings > Books.

Under Syncing, you can change settings like these:

Turn on Reading Now to sync your reading progress, current book, notes, and bookmarks using your iCloud account. Reading Now only syncs to other iOS devices, not your Mac.

Turn on iCloud Drive to sync PDFs, EPUBs, and books created with iBooks Author that you didn't purchase from the Book Store that you added to your Library across all of your devices.

Under Allow Books To Access, turn on Cellular Data to stream books while your iPhone or iPad is connected to the Internet via a cellular connection and using cellular data.

You can also change settings in the Books app. Tap Reading Now, then tap or your picture in the upper-right corner. From here, you can redownload your purchases, access Family Purchases, and redeem gift cards or content codes.

If you're an author or publisher, learn how to publish your book on the Book Store with iBooks Author or Pages.

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